Men and women fare equally well after angioplasty
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Gender does not affect outcome in patients who undergo Angioplasty in a blocked artery in the leg. Therefore, gender alone should not be used in making decisions about who should undergo the procedure among patients with this type of circulatory disease, said Dr. Steven G. Katz from the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California, Pasadena.
Angioplasty is a procedure in which a balloon-tipped catheter is threaded into the arteries to clear fatty plaques, according their report, published in the Archives of Surgery.
Katz and his colleagues evaluated the initial and long-term success of Angioplasty conducted in 173 women and 178 men with blocked arteries in the leg, treated over a 10-year period.
Although preliminary analysis suggested that sex may play a role in treatment outcome, further evaluation identified only the location of the blockage and the quality of blood flow as significant factors that influenced the long-term outcome of angioplasty.
The initial success rate of angioplasty exceeded 97 percent, the authors report. Five-year success rates were considerably lower for blockages in the groin (26.0 percent) versus blockages lower in the leg (62.8 percent).
As angioplasty becomes a more common treatment of patients with blockages in the leg arteries, “it will become even more important to elucidate the predictors of success or failure of these interventions,” Katz concluded.
SOURCE: Archives of Surgery, August 2005.
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